EMI shield cases are used to prevent electromagnetic waves generated in high frequency electronic components or modules, which are used for electronic equipments and information communication equipments, from leaking to the outside or protect the high frequency electronic components or modules against external electromagnetic waves.
Such an EMI shield case is made of an electrically conductive material such as a metal sheet to shield electromagnetic waves. Also, the EMI shield case has a box shape with at least one surface opened to cover electronic components or modules mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB).
As described above, the EMI shield case is mounted on a ground pattern of the PCB. Here, the EMI shield case may be separated from the ground pattern of the PCB so that the electronic components and modules mounted therein can be easily repaired. For this, a lower end of a sidewall of the shield case may be inserted into a metal chip previously soldered on the ground pattern.
All the typical metal clips have linear shapes, respectively. Thus, it may be difficult to fit the lower end of the sidewall of the shield case into the metal clip due to a small alignment margin of the metal clip. In addition, since the metal clip having the linear shape is fitted merely into the sidewall of the shield case, a coupling force between the metal clip and the shield case is low. Thus, a large number of metal clips should be used to reinforce the coupling force between the metal clip and the shield case. Also, when the shield case is manufactured through a press process including cutting and bending, a gap may occur in a corner of the shield case with the corner cut. Thus, when the shield case is repeatedly mounted or separated, the gap may be more widened to reduce EMI shielding efficiency.
To solve this limitation, a clip terminal which decides and maintains a position of a shield case is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2011-198839. Here, the clip terminal is disposed approaching a side surface of the shield case from the outside and has a sidewall including a bent part which is bent in an L-shape along the side surface of the shield case at a corner of the shield case.
However, since the clip terminal should have the L-shaped bent part, the process of manufacturing the clip terminal may be complicated. Furthermore, a pair of clips may have shapes and sizes different from each other with respect to an absorption surface due to the L-shaped bent part. Thus, when a reflow soldering process is performed and the clip terminal is picked up, it may be difficult to mount the clip terminal at a desired position on fused solder cream having low viscosity due to large shake of the clip terminal. In addition, the absorption surface may have a width greater than that of a plate of each of the clips. As a result, the absorption surface may occupy a wide area on a printed circuit board on which the clip terminal is mounted. Thus, the clip terminal may be incongruous with existing electronic equipments in which a high-density mounting technology is required.
These problems are not limited merely to the clip terminal for fixing the EMI shield case, but may also occur in a clip terminal for fixing a case which protects internal electronic components against external impacts.